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Danny Spond, holding the football after making a game-saving interception against BYU this season, was among Colorado's top prospects as a senior quarterback at Columbine in fall 2009. (Jonathan Daniel, Getty Images)

Danny Spond sat in his hospital bed, trying to grasp his growing tragedy better than he could a football or the spoken word. The left side of the Notre Dame outside linebacker's body was paralyzed. His words slurred as though he spoke through a mouth full of cotton.

Oh, where was that Notre Dame jacket he always wore when he was 5 years old in Littleton? How could he live his dream, walking on the practice field of his beloved Notre Dame one moment in August and then two hours later wonder if he would ever walk again?

"There were a lot of scary words thrown around," Spond said last week. "Some things you definitely don't like to hear."

Words such as "stroke," "seizure" and "tumor." The only word going through Spond's mind was "serious."

Spond is walking again. He's talking fine again. What he says is that trying to dethrone reigning national champion Alabama (12-1) in the BCS title game in Miami on Monday night isn't as intimidating as what he tackled in August.

Starting for the top-ranked Irish (12-0) doesn't qualify as a miracle to Spond although, as a staunch Catholic, he may believe in them. But what the former Columbine High School quarterback went through in August qualifies as a scare that grabbed his soul.

Notre Dame's fourth practice of preseason camp started as a normal day for Spond. But halfway through practice, the junior got a headache. For college linebackers, headaches are like scratches. Then it got worse. He started thinking about the awful concussion he had at Columbine, except for one thing.

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This time he started losing function on his left side.

Trainers drove him to Memorial Hospital, where doctors were perplexed. Meanwhile, Spond lay in bed with doctors looking confused.

"Those were the moments I was most scared," he said.

Back in Littleton, his father, Don, received a phone call: Call Notre Dame as fast as you can, the person said. That's when the rumors flew from South Bend to Littleton like lightning: Danny Spond had a head injury. He had bleeding on the brain. Brain surgery is pending.

The next day Don could finally talk to his Danny. He didn't sound like anyone Don knew.

"When we talked to him, he didn't talk like our son," Don said. "He didn't know where he was."

Don quickly flew to South Bend. By the time he arrived, his son could move his left arm. He started to get feeling back in his jaw. He could walk but had no feeling in his knee down. However, doctors still didn't know the problem.

Finding the right diagnosis

At the urging of Notre Dame officials, Don, Danny and a Notre Dame trainer drove 3½ hours the next day to Ann Arbor, Mich., to see University of Michigan neurologist Jeffrey Kutcher.

"I didn't know what to think," Danny said during a recent phone interview. "I knew I'd be OK. I knew God was looking over me, no matter what happened to me."

Kutcher put Danny through more tests and, a week after what appeared to be a life-altering event, Kutcher had his diagnosis: a migraine. To be exact, it was a semi-hemiplegic migraine. It's a migraine with such massive pain, part of the body temporarily shut down.

Now that he knew he would walk again, Spond's next goal was to play again. The problem was he could barely lift his left leg. He had to go through rehab just to relearn how to walk.

By Sept. 15, in Notre Dame's third game and 30 days after he lay paralyzed on his left side, Danny Spond started at Michigan State. He had four tackles in a 20-3 upset win and has started ever since, collecting 38 tackles and an interception.

Spond has impressed everyone who followed his progression. However, his teammates were already impressed, particularly one of them.

"For a quarterback to go to outside linebacker and to be setting the edge on 300-plus-pound linemen, that takes character and courage in itself," linebacker Manti Te'o, the Heisman Trophy runner-up, told reporters in South Florida last week.

Once committed to Buffs

Can you imagine Spond starting for Colorado?

It could have happened. He committed to the Buffs before his senior year at Columbine in 2009. While wearing shamrocks on his sleeve, Spond was still a died-in-the-fleece Colorado boy. Don, a plumbing contractor, played tight end and defensive end at Columbine, where he met his wife his sophomore year. When the Columbine tragedy happened in 1999, Danny was in the second grade, but the attack affects the family to this day. It's why he wears No. 13 for Notre Dame.

Columbine had 13 victims.

By the time he started his senior year at the school, Danny was a first-team all-state quarterback as a junior and had committed to CU. However, that season Buffs coach Dan Hawkins was scuffling on his way to a 3-9 record, his fourth consecutive losing season.

In the season finale, Danny went to Folsom Field with his father and brother-in-law to watch the Buffs lose to Nebraska 28-20.

"Sitting in the stands, something about my feeling toward the program wasn't all there," Danny said. "It wouldn't be fair to the university to play and not give all I had. I knew something wasn't right.

"It was a big rivalry game and it was just quiet. ... Sitting in the stands, I didn't feel that energy. That wasn't something I wanted to be part of."

Soon, Stanford's Jim Harbaugh visited and wanted him to back up Andrew Luck. TCU's Gary Patterson wanted him to back up Andy Dalton.

Back at Notre Dame, Charlie Weis discarded Spond as a hybrid who couldn't be projected at a true position. When Weis got fired, new Irish coach Brian Kelly looked at more film of Spond and called.

Immediately Spond wanted to get resized for a new Notre Dame jacket.

"He really wanted to play quarterback," Columbine coach Andy Lowry said. "But when Notre Dame came in, he said, 'I'll play anywhere for Notre Dame.' It was his childhood dream."

He still didn't have a position, but Kelly saw his 6-foot-2, 220-pound frame, his work ethic and his toughness and realized he had the blueprint of a linebacker.

Now at 248 pounds, Spond will be a huge cog in trying to bottle up a prolific Alabama offense (38.5 points per game). His dream school could win its first national title since 1988.

But if the Irish can't do it — they're 10-point underdogs — Spond can move on. He's walking. He's talking. He's a student at Notre Dame.

"It's a cliché, but I don't take life for granted by any means," he said. "Practice may be tough at times, or you may be getting down on yourself about whatever.